The present invention relates to data caching and search engine programs and more particularly to a system and method for caching rental real property information in a single, sorted and indexed table in a database according to a plurality of criteria to enable, through use of said single, indexed table in a database, rapid searching and retrieval of specific property.
The computer is a tool for manipulating, caching, searching, and retrieving data in many forms. Given a sufficiently large and accessible storage medium, a computer can sort and store volumes of information to be later searched according to selected criteria, essentially producing a customized report.
The computer has become a valuable tool in the real estate market, and especially in the fast paced area of vacation rental property. Several methods are known to match buyers with sellers of various types of property. On a basic level, an individual buyer might identify a piece of property that is being offered for sale through advertisement or word of mouth, and then directly contact the seller or the seller's agent. Once contact is made, negotiations can thereafter take place.
Particularly for large-scale transactions, the process usually is more complicated. Instead of searching item by item to find a desired piece of property, a buyer may wish to narrow the universe of potential property according to certain criteria such as price, size or location. This permits the buyer to avoid spending time looking at property or listings which are of only tangential interest or no interest at all, and instead to focus on the universe of property which most suits the buyer's needs. From the seller's perspective, it is desirable to narrow contacts with potential buyers to those more likely to result in a consummated transaction. Perhaps most importantly, it is in the seller's interest to evaluate the financial position of prospective buyers to minimize financial risk and to avoid added time and expense.
The vacation rental property market operates in a similar fashion. Families and individuals that desire specific vacation rental property generally have set criteria they seek in the property. For example, vacationers may want beach versus mountain sites, or skiing versus swimming features. As is evident, the combination of features that a particular individual may want from a particular piece of property can be very large and cumbersome to search.
Recently, advances in data storage and retrieval methods and communications methods have permitted more sophisticated approaches to performing searches that match buyers and sellers. Various forms of computer searches exist including Boolean based searches. In a typical computer based search, a search is performed based on pre-selected features.
In a typical Boolean search, a search system examines a search item for exact matches and absence of matches. For items with which quantitative comparisons are possible, the items are examined to determine whether the items are greater than or less than a given threshold of a search feature. A text-based search may examine the number of occurrences of a certain word in a text or character or characters in a text.
More specific examples of computer searches currently used include NEXUS.RTM., which utilizes a form of a tiered search. A user of the NEXUS.RTM. system initiates a search by selecting a set of search features. The NEXUS.RTM. system searches for items in a search pool, which are exact matches with the search features. Once this first level of search is concluded, the user has the option to narrow the search by selecting additional search features. A new search pool composed of the previously selected items is searched using the new set of search features. This process may be repeated until a predetermined number of items are selected.
Another example of a computer search includes the multiple listing system (MLS) typically used by real estate agents searching for client desired homes. A database is used which contains homes for sale listed by agents and placed in the MLS. The search method utilized in the MLS typically examines exact matches. For example, given a selection search feature of homes with a price range from $140,000 to $150,000, the MLS selects homes with prices within this range. However, the MLS does not select homes, which may be a little under or a little over the price range. Therefore, the search range is absolute. In addition, if a real estate agent is searching for a home located in a specific zip code, a search performed by the MLS discards any home in the search pool which is located outside of the specified zip code, including homes which are only one block away from the specific zip code.
Many real estate agents now utilize a network of terminals linked to a host computer that provides a database of listed properties. The agent can formulate a list of properties in which the buyer may be interested based on criteria provided by the buyer, such as price, location, size or type. The buyer can then view the property and, if interested, can contact the seller or more usually, the seller's agent in order to initiate negotiations.
Advances in communications and multimedia applications have been applied to improve the quality of the information conveyed to the potential buyer about property being offered for sale. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 5,235,680 describes a system and method in which textual and image information is transmitted between a host and several remote display terminals. In this way, images of the property being offered can be conveyed in real time to the buyer.
A related prior art method of linking potential buyers with sellers involves “home shopping,” typically using television and voice communication. For example, interactive systems have been proposed through which the prospective buyer can order merchandise advertised via data transmission over telephone lines, thereby eliminating the need to speak with a salesperson. The system described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,191,410 is illustrative of such a prior art approach.
Even more recently, the global network commonly referred to as the “Internet” has been used to advertise particular pieces of property to potential buyers. Such uses are primarily limited to situations in which a seller advertises a particular piece of property by posting a listing on an “electronic bulletin board” which may be read by potential buyers. The buyers can then contact the seller or the seller's agent by telephone or by electronic mail.
While greatly improving the accessibility of buyers to information concerning real property being offered for sale, these prior art methods and systems suffer from many disadvantages and drawbacks, particularly in the context of searching for short-term vacation rental property. Generally, home purchasing and long-term rental searches have a few key search criteria. This is generally due to the amount of information necessary for the search, where a potential buyer or renter is looking for more general property attributes, and relies on limited data storage in the computer system.
Most of the prior art approaches described above are limited in geographic scope. Thus, the time and expense incurred through use of the prior art approaches by a potential buyer interested in purchasing real property in a distant area is dramatically increased. Further, where networks are accessible to a larger geographic area, they typically require a subscriber fee to gain access, thereby resulting in added expense to the buyer, and thus providing a disincentive to at least those buyers not located close to the seller.
Moreover, many of the systems according to the prior art fail to perform more than an item-by-item listing of pieces of real property being offered for sale. A buyer must therefore expend a great deal of time and effort to sort through each item to find one that is of potential interest. This problem is further exasperated with short-term rentals where the potential renter is looking for a very specific set of property attributes. Even where the prior art provides a sorting function, such as with the real estate databases, they generally are not directly available to the buyer, but instead must be accessed through an agent. Again, this adds to the buyer's costs, and provides a disincentive to purchase, thus adversely impacting the seller.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a rapidly searchable database for a large number of rental property listings that is searchable through several different property attributes, and which is regularly updated with current rental information, and that overcomes the above-noted problems with current property databases. These and other objects of the present invention will become apparent through the disclosure of the invention to follow.